Page 74 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“I was hoping you would,” he said. “I’m certain Diana would like them better if you did. Come here,” he said, and held out his arms for her to crawl into them and settle across his lap. “So that is our plan,” he said. “Tonight, we’ll find a hotel, bathe, eat, and have a proper sleep. Tomorrow morning, we do our shopping, make ourselves presentable—”
“And then we go see Diana?” Hannah gave a giddy little wiggle, pulling at his shoulder.
“Thenwe go see Diana,” he said. “We shall have to be on our very best behavior. That means no running, no shouting, and absolutely no jumping in puddles if there happen to be any about.” London had the habit of being rather overcast and rainy, and Hannah had but rarely been able to resist the allure of a good puddle.
“I can’t wait,” Hannah said, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “It’s almost tomorrow already.”
Near enough to it, at least, to a child’s mind, given that she ought to have been abed already. Tomorrow would dawn in a few short hours, and then—then he would have a wholelifetimeof tomorrows to offer.
So long as Diana still wanted them.
Chapter Twenty Nine
The morning sky had been clear and perfectly free of clouds, but by mid-afternoon a summer storm had rolled in, hurling the rain against the windows in sheets. Raining cats and dogs, Diana supposed it might have been said.
She perched her chin in her hand as she gazed through the window, peering out into the street from the comfort of the drawing room. Wherever they were, she hoped that Hannah had gotten her little ginger kitten. That they had settled enough to merit a letter soon. Even just the tiniest note to say that they were well. That they were happy at last.
Her spectacles had fogged up from the chill of the rain emanating from the window, and she removed them to rub the lenses clear and resettle them upon the bridge of her nose—but it couldn’t clear the window of the blur of the rain, and so she repaired to the sofa for a fresh cup of tea and the book she’d left behind upon the table.
Slipping the folded letter that she’d used as a bookmark out from between the pages, she found a comfortable position upon the sofa and opened the book once again. Probably she had another twenty minutes or so before Lydia would pop in and cajole her into some activity or another, which she imagined would keep Diana from sinking too deeply into unpleasant thoughts. It would be something, at least, to occupy her time.
She turned a page and stirred a sugar lump into her tea. At least she had once again grown accustomed to the sound of carriages rolling by, to the voices carrying in from the street. She had stopped finding herself startled by the movements of servants moving through their paces, going about whatever chores required doing.
She could hear a footman in the foyer now, the click of his heels upon the floor a rapid tattoo that suggested he was hurrying to answer the door. The time for morning calls had not quite concluded, she supposed. Lydia had received a few callers perhaps an hour or two ago, but she’d been called away to put Edward down for his nap, and Diana had not been much in the moodfor calls.
Still, since she was the one presently occupying the drawing room, she would also be the one to whom the footman handed off calling cards, and so she shoved the letter once again into the book and snapped it shut. Since it was unlikely that anyone would be calling upon her specifically, it would be entirely acceptable to say that they were notat hometo receive calls at present.
A scratch at the drawing room door heralded the arrival of the footman. The door opened; the footman sketched a bow.
He had no calling card in his hand. Odd, that.
“My lady,” he said, in a strange, flustered tone of voice, “You have—”
“Diana!” A high-pitched shriek assaulted her ears, and a small blond whirlwind barreled through the door, very nearly throwing the footman straight off balance as she careened past.
“Hannah,” a masculine voice groaned, concealed beyond the half-opened door. “We discussedthis. We’re meant to wait until we’re admitted.”
It was too late for that; Hannah cast herself straight into Diana’s arms in a magnificent swirl of blue skirts that were saturated with murky water. And Diana didn’t care how, or why, or in what condition she had arrived—just that those small arms had flung themselves around her neck, and held so tightly. “You’ve been stomping through puddles,” she accused gently, sweeping the tiny loose locks of hair that had come free of those plaits away from Hannah’s face.
“We discussed that, too.” Ben appeared in the doorway as the footman backed away, assured now, it seemed, that they would be admitted. “Shepromised.”
“It was sucha wonderful puddle,” Hannah said against her shoulder. “I didn’t knowhowwonderful when I promised.”
Oh, she was going to cry. She could feel the tears burning behind her eyes already, feel them in the tightness of her throat. “But how are you here?” she asked, wrapping her arms around the child who clung to her. “I thought…you said you would write when you settled.”
“We never settled.” Still Ben hovered near the door of the drawing room as if uncertain of his welcome. He carried a bouquet of white roses tucked beneath one arm, wrapped in paper. His coat was new, she thought. Not as fine as most would expect of an earl, but well-made and clean…excepting the flecks of water that marked it, which she supposed had been acquired when Hannah had leapt into that particularly appealing puddle. “We couldn’t. There was nowhere—there was nowhere that suited us.”
She found that rather difficult to believe. They’d had more than a month to find a place, and she imagined there were any number of small, coastal towns that would have suited their purposes quite nicely. Their dream had been a modest one, after all.
“We came to ask you to marry us!” Hannah chirped in her ear.
Oh. Oh, dear—and there they came, those tears she had hoped to hold off, sliding down her cheeks one after another.
Ben slapped his hand over his eyes and groaned, “Hannah.”
A laugh tripped through the tightness of her throat. “Have you?” she asked, dropping a kiss atop the blond head resting upon her shoulder. “How lovely.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye when you left,” Hannah said. “I just…I wanted you to stay.”
